The Greatest Women Golfers
The women's game has produced players of such technical mastery and competitive ferocity that comparing them across eras becomes a genuinely difficult exercise. The broad arc runs from the early dominance of Babe Zaharias and the LPGA Tour's founding generation, through the mechanical perfection of Mickey Wright, the power and elegance of Annika Sorenstam, to the attacking brilliance of Lorena Ochoa and the modern excellence of Nelly Korda. Each era has produced its defining figure, and each figure has shaped the game that followed.
Babe Zaharias and the Founding Generation
Mildred 'Babe' Zaharias is one of the most remarkable athletes in American sporting history. An Olympic gold medallist in track and field at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, she took up golf seriously in her late twenties and proceeded to win 41 LPGA Tour events and ten major championships, including three US Women's Opens. Her power off the tee was extraordinary for any era, and she was one of the co-founders of the LPGA Tour in 1950, providing a combination of celebrity and competitive legitimacy that the new organisation badly needed.
Patty Berg, another founding member of the LPGA, won 60 tour events including 15 majors — a major championship total that remains a record. Berg's short game and competitive intelligence were the foundation of a career that extended from the late 1940s into the 1960s. Together, she and Zaharias set the standard against which subsequent generations measured themselves.
Mickey Wright
Ask many teaching professionals and golf historians who the greatest ball-striker of all time was, and a significant number will name Mickey Wright rather than Ben Hogan. Wright's swing was described by Tom Kite as 'the best golf swing I ever saw, man or woman.' She won 82 LPGA Tour events — second only to Kathy Whitworth's 88 in the all-time list — including 13 major championships, four of those being US Women's Opens. In 1963 she won 13 times in a single season, a record of sustained excellence that has never been matched. She largely withdrew from competitive golf in her early thirties due to foot problems and a preference for privacy, which meant her record was never fully extended.
Kathy Whitworth
Kathy Whitworth holds the record for most professional tour victories by any golfer, male or female, in the history of the game: 88 LPGA Tour wins accumulated between 1962 and 1985. She won seven majors, was the LPGA's leading money winner eight times, and was named Player of the Year seven times. Her longevity and consistency were extraordinary. Unlike Wright, Whitworth never won a US Women's Open, which prevents simple comparisons — but the sheer volume of her victories across more than two decades speaks to a competitive quality that transcends any single championship.
Nancy Lopez
When Nancy Lopez burst onto the LPGA Tour in 1978, winning nine tournaments in her rookie season including five consecutive events, she did not merely take the tour by storm — she transformed public awareness of women's golf in America. Her warmth, charisma, and attacking style of play drew galleries that the tour had not previously commanded. She eventually won 48 tour events and three LPGA Championships. Her impact on the game's popularity, particularly among younger players and viewers from Hispanic backgrounds, extended far beyond the statistics.
Annika Sorenstam
Annika Sorenstam is arguably the most technically complete women's golfer of the modern era. The Swede won 72 LPGA Tour events and ten major championships, and her approach to the game — methodical, relentlessly disciplined, supported by fitness regimes and statistical analysis that were novel in the women's game of the late 1990s — redefined what professional female golf could look like. She was the first woman to break 60 in official competition, shooting 59 at the Standard Register Ping in Phoenix in 2001. Her decision in 2003 to accept a sponsor's invitation to play at the Colonial in Fort Worth on the PGA Tour generated enormous controversy and media attention; she missed the cut, but her performance earned widespread respect.
Her rivalry with Karrie Webb, the Australian who won seven majors, drove both players to performances neither might have reached alone. Webb's victories at the 2000 and 2001 US Women's Opens, alongside her AIG Women's British Open and Kraft Nabisco titles, make her one of the undisputed greats of the game.
Lorena Ochoa
Lorena Ochoa's career was brief by the standards of the game's greatest players — she retired in 2008 at the age of 27 to start a family — but in a five-year window of dominance she compiled one of the most impressive records in LPGA history. She won 27 tour events in that period, was ranked world number one for 158 consecutive weeks, and won two major championships. Her style of play was fearless and attacking, her short game electric, and her retirement was a genuine loss to the sport. Open the map to explore courses where the world's best women have competed.
Se Ri Pak and the Korean Phenomenon
Se Ri Pak's 1998 victories at the US Women's Open and the McDonald's LPGA Championship, achieved at the age of 20, triggered a generation of Korean players who grew up watching her on television and deciding to pursue golf professionally. The pipeline that began with Pak eventually produced Inbee Park, who won seven major championships and an Olympic gold medal; Ji Yeon Ryu; Sung Hyun Park; and a cohort of players so dominant in the 2010s that at several points the top ten of the women's world rankings consisted almost entirely of Koreans. It is one of the most remarkable collective surges in the history of any sport.
Nelly Korda and the Current Era
Nelly Korda of the United States represents the current standard of the women's game. Her 2021 Olympic gold medal in Tokyo and subsequent rise to world number one marked her as the dominant player of her generation. Her ball-striking, particularly her iron play and driving accuracy, set a benchmark that forces comparisons with Sorenstam at her best. The women's game as of the mid-2020s is deeper and more international than at any point in its history, with players from the United States, South Korea, Australia, Sweden, and throughout Europe competing at the highest level — a testament to the foundational work done by every great player who came before.